1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a communication system, and in particular, to an authentication system and method in a communication system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Provisioning of a service capable of transmitting a large amount of data to Mobile Stations (MSs) at high rates is an active study area in communication systems technology. In particular, Mobile Internet Protocol (MIP) is currently being studied where allocating MIP addresses to the MSs is being considered in order to provide for a more stable high-speed-large-data transmission service, while ensuring mobility of the MSs. However, because the MSs that do not support MIP cannot receive the MIP-based service, Proxy MIP (PMIP) has been proposed to enable the MSs to receive the same service as the MIP-based service. For notational simplicity, a communication system using MIP is called an MIP communication system and a communication system using PMIP is called a PMIP communication system.
Efforts have been made to develop authentication schemes for authenticating MSs in the MIP and PMIP communication systems. The authentication schemes are largely categorized into device authentication, device-user authentication, and user authentication. The device-user authentication scheme authenticates a device and a user by a single Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) or a double EAP.
Despite these active studies concerning authentication in the MIP and PMIP communication systems, there are no specified authentication schemes. Accordingly, there exists a need for a method for authenticating MSs, such that signaling overhead is minimized in both the MIP and PMIP communication systems.